Perth Voice Interactive

FORMER Perth city council CEO Frank Edwards is asking his old employer to reimburse him the $2860 he spent on lawyers, when appearing before the WA corruption and crime commission.

He’d been interviewed during the CCC’s investigation into lord mayor Lisa Scaffidi not disclosing travel gifts by companies that also had dealings with the council.

City policy says where members or staff “become involved in legal proceedings because of their official functions,” it “may assist the individual in meeting reasonable expenses”.

A confidential item says staff recommend the council approves the reimbursement for Mr Edwards.

Trusted implicitly

The former CEO was cited in the CCC report as “a most experienced CEO and person on whom Mrs Scaffidi relied for advice and assistance especially in her early days as lord mayor. She said she trusted him implicitly.”

When BHP Billiton invited Ms Scaffidi to attend the Beijing Olympics on February 20 2008, she’d sought Mr Edwards’ advice, and her “recollection was that Mr Edwards told her it would be okay to go” because the council didn’t have any decisions regarding BHP likely to be coming up.

However, two months prior a BHP contractor had made early inquiries about setting up an Olympic Games live feed site in Forrest Place, and the CCC reckons, “this information would have been available to Mrs Scaffidi or Mr Edwards on reasonable enquiry by them in February 2008. No such enquiry appears to have been made”.

When BHP’s request for more than $20,000 in sponsorship turned up at a council meeting Ms Scaffidi had the choice of withdrawing from the Olympics trip or declaring an impartiality because of the gift.

She turned to Mr Edwards who helped “camouflage””— his word — the actual nature of the impartiality so the lord mayor’s rivals on council would not know she was going to the Olympics, and they could not therefore inform the public via the media.

The CCC concluded a “reasonable person in the position of Mrs Scaffidi or in the position of Mr Edwards, who at least on this matter had assumed an advisory role, would have undertaken inquiries to see whether BHPB was intending to undertake an activity involving a local government discretion”.

The CCC report added, “although Ms Scaffidi relied on Mr Edwards, and was entitled to do so, the ultimate responsibility, as she acknowledged in examination, was hers alone”.

And while Mr Edwards had helped craft a camouflaging declaration of interest, it was still up to the lord mayor to disclose the gift in her annual return, which she didn’t do.

Ms Scaffidi was returned as lord mayor at the October 2015 elections.

by DAVID BELL